#giant space brain

[carionto]

How to beat Deathworlders

I don't know what I want to write and it's a little frustrating. So, to fix that, I'm just gonna throw this at me - Giant Ant Planet

The first call to arms Humanity has declared. They mobilize with unseen speed and precision seven of their mightiest Dreadnoughts, hundreds of transports, and amass fifty thousand soldiers, fully armed and trained on the target.

They are headed to a world Humans scouted as having great potential for life to flourish. How correct they were.

In orbit above the planet Chromathium-2-4, the station Truncated Crescent Ellipses was tasked with conducting experiments to test the viability of Human-digestible flora and fauna living on Chromatoff (as the scientists began to call it for short).

When the fleet arrived, the final message from the station turned out to be true - it had crash landed on the surface. From the chaos of the recordings they received, there was a containment breach and the systems were under attack by some unknown electronic waves and incomprehensible code. A hostile act, but by who?

This was two weeks ago. Whoever it was, they would know the wrath of Humanity. Once we find your traces, there will be no hiding for long.

Preliminary scans show the station was dead and only local creatures and plants appeared, in greater density than elsewhere, but no matter. Just some animals.

The first unmanned craft landed and began exploring the wreckage. All of the digital systems were fried, not a hint of power remained anywhere. Attempts to manually power anything up proved fruitless - the data had been replaced with pure garbage code. Then, the drone vanished underground and went silent. Connection failure.

Orbital sights showed nothing, all frequencies were monitored and were free of unaccounted signals. The next group of drones descended and shortly after touchdown they too were seemingly devoured by the ground, all power and electronic signals cut.

A deep scan showed the same dense biological activity, but looking closer at the data it was like a carpet just below the actual surface layer. And for whatever reason the pulse couldn't penetrate below a few meters. Scanning areas further from the crash revealed a much more detailed and sparsely populated map going down the expected three kilometers.

For the third attempt they kept several drones above the landed ones at different altitudes. The moment the drones on the ground were vanished again, a sudden signal struck the ones floating up to seventy meters above and cut them off as well, but didn't seem to reach any beyond that. The visual was not as detailed as they'd like, but it was enough - the tips of large pincers and antennae and beady eyes. Ants.

The fleet maintained a perimeter around the entire system just in case, and spent half a day consulting professionals and former colleagues of the deceased scientists to get a better understanding of the current situation.

Two experiments the team had worked on before and supposedly continued when relocated to the new station stood out - metabolic acceleration, and unassisted neural interfacing via modified brain waves. Far from the wildest here, such as the self-relocating giant sequoia, but ones that offered a plausible explanation.

Ants serve a variety of critical functions in the maintenance of an ecosystem, so naturally they are a part of most late stage terraforming efforts.

Here, however, something went wrong and they evolved alongside technology at an intimate level. Perhaps deliberately made to do so.

They are spreading fast too. Twelve hours ago the "carpet" of underground ants was roughly two square kilometers. Now it was close to three and a half. In mere weeks they may spread across the entire continent, perhaps make it across (or below?) the seas somehow and ravenously consume all life on this planet before succumbing to extinction themselves.

This world is bountiful. Also, we're here already. Hmm...

Eh, may as well. Plenty of us have seen Starship Troopers and only joined to hopefully one day shoot at alien bugs. Guess these are more like home grown critters, but whatever.

With that brazen attitude (and a quick orbital bombardment) the troop ships landed, well, were forced to crash land the final few meters, but whatever electromagnetic warfare these ants were throwing our way didn't account for reinforced alloy armor and hand-held rail guns. Their sharp pincers, acid throwers, and thick carapaces did however.

Actually, fucking hell, they move real fast underground. Uhh...

This isn't looking so good in retrospect. Did they add cockroach DNA in these bastards too? Some of them literally don't care about losing their head, what the fuck!?

Okay, holy shit, abort mission! Good thing we still install regular ignition engines as an added redundancy to the military ships. Not very fast or efficient, but screw you, burn beneath the thrusters. BURN!

*deep breath*

Okay. So. We lost 831 soldiers, and 4625 are injured. And the ant casualties don't matter cuz they're ants. Super mutant ants. Who are going to take over the world if we don't nuke them. Which might not work anyway because HUMAN scientists made them.

Hoisted by our own petard or something.

Right, let's just chalk it up as a... military exercise gone wrong and quarantine the planet. Wait, make that the whole system.

...so this is what it must've felt like to lose the Emu War...

[daffodils-and-bonfires]

[theajaheira]

like. God. jaheira and rion. how do u not look at that problem mom and the daughter she raised who is literally a carbon copy of her and therefore Of Course hates her and is insanely critical of all the choices she makes & is responded to with this knife sharp pride & a military commander’s love. and not feel insane

[gullivertravelstowonderland]

I'm so fucking qhslshalshdksh all I wanna do rn is make g/t fanart/fic for a show I'm obsessed with but it has such a small fanbase it will either fall under the radar completely or be on the top page for anyone looking for content of it so shskshsorhebd send help TT_TT

[tinytracys]

Langstrom Fischler sends a gift…

Brains: What on EARTH does he expect us to do with this?

Kayo: Yeah, I don’t see this working at all.

Scott: Does anyone have any other ideas? Any other ideas at all? Anything, no matter how crazy?

Gordon: …

Scott: ANYTHING AT ALL?

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::many hours later::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Gordon: Yeah we can totally fly that INTO SPACE

Virgil on comms: RIGHT???

Scott: …

Brains: *weeps*

Kayo: You are all going to die.

Thundertober prompt 16 - Asteroid Comet

(sssssh I know but we went a long way down this rabbit hole before we remembered the episode in question involved a comet… so I’m changing the prompt… call it ‘artistic licence’)

@thunder-tober @skymaiden32

(also @crunchyluigi)

[dykedvonte]

Discussing the NCR (Fallouts NV's Military Industrial Complex)

Fallout regularly discusses the idea of the military, its faults, its strengths, and most importantly, the psycho-social aspects of it regarding those who are members. We have seen a direct critique of the military generalized through the Enclave's overt nationalism, the hoarding of resources and indoctrination through the Brotherhood of Steel, and an almost eerily modern critique of the whole military-industrial complex through the NCR in New Vegas. In these series of posts, I will be focusing primarily if not exclusively on the last one.

The NCR we see in the game is strictly the military side of things and the depiction of active occupation during a time of eminent war, conflicting factions, and resource scarcity. It is in this we are missing a major factor that negatively affects the view of the NCR in the game and out: Civilian life along with citizen opinion on the military. While we do get Mojave civilian opinion on the military (often neutral or negative) we do not get those who are New California Republic citizens, not those who actually discuss the military more so not understanding the importance of the occupation and the President's choices.

We do not see how life is regularly lived by the average citizen as we have not seen New California in New Vegas, though, we get words and glimpses that the people are relatively content in the growing country minus the fact many people are not happy with the choice of encroaching on the Mojave. This most similarly reflects it's real-world application that many civilian citizens reject acquisition and war due to the economic effects it has on the country and the general violence/loss associated.

In this, we come to an issue of losing a perspective that is unique to the NCR as a military representative. The Brotherhood is notably a place where its active members are intertwined with its efforts, the young are raised to be scribes, paladins, etc... To where even if one is not fighting for The Brotherhood, they are still intertwined, it's propaganda is the life. The Enclave is even more cut n' dry in that it is mostly made up of government representatives. It is a group even smaller than the former, even more selective and intertwined that their propaganda IS a form of Eugenics. The NCR is unique in that there is a clear distinction between what is the military force, the civilian population, and the choice if one wants to be a part of the former.

There is a distinct difference in the cultures of the factions you are born into and those you must enlist or join (forcibly for some). While this is a long-winded way to get into the actual discussion I want to facilitate throughout these posts I wanted an initial background post to understand the aspects I am and am not exploring and explaining along with a hub post to link everything I intend to discuss in the coming days and weeks, starting with:

Why Do People Join the NCR?

...which will be discussed and linked back here like everything else regarding to this topic.

Links: TBA

[chernobog13]

Tonight's feature - Beware the Deadly Dancing Witch!

[cloudd-nyne]

.

[elegyofthemoon]

IF YOU COULD be at any airport in the world rn which one

the bangkok one i wanna go home but also to look at this cool statue :)

[tempestclerics]

surprising exactly no one who knows me, i really enjoyed pacific rim

[vaugarde]

streamed the manaphy movie and the hoenn ranger anime specials and god. i miss when team rocket was funny. i miss battle frontier

[the-saddest-clown]

i finally started watching secret life and I cannot figure out what in the WORLD BigB is up to.

that being said YES I KNOW IM EXTREMELT LATE TO THE PARTY OK SUE ME. Just nobody spoil it for me ok I’ve taken great care to avoid any and all spoilers so far pretty pls ok thank youuuu :3

[lychniis]

i would kindly like ti ask the hsr devs about who the fuck just woke up and decided to make the xianzhou alliance a bunch of flying ship-ships in deepspace.

i would also like to know who decided that the art kids on the zhuming went wild and turned the somewhat reasonable ship-ship into a fucking lotus flower.

[egglygreg]

A quick digital mockup of a dream I had last night, so I don't forget what it looked like

[lcpmon]

Do the people that follow my artblog know I don't draw any theme consistently. You will be handed whatever slop has been dumped onto my canvas and whether u like it or not is none of my business

[littlehen]

I was in a training session today and I was massively distracted by this weird chair